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Thursday, January 11, 2018

Ways and Means

To continue our
discussion on Pope Francis’s recent “Urbi et Orbi” Christmas message, we want
to address his advocacy of the “two state” solution for Palestine.We disagree — which should not shock even “ultramontane”
Catholics, since anyone can disagree with the application of a principle, as
long as there is no change in the principle.

"Take a letter. . . ."

For example,
suppose Pope Francis tells someone at the Vatican, “I want you to hand-deliver
this envelope to the Archbishop of Milan.Take the train.Traffic is
terrible.”The functionary takes the
envelope, and goes to his cousin Luigi who is flying his private airplane to
Milan and back that day and lets the functionary ride for free as a favor to
the pope.Has the functionary disobeyed
the pope?

Nobody but a
lunatic or a completely rigid thinker would think the functionary did anything
wrong.The job got done more efficiently
and at less cost, and even the pope’s concern about traffic was taken into
consideration.

Let’s take
another, better example.A number of the
popes have stressed the importance of widespread capital ownership, for a
number of reasons we’ve gone into at great length elsewhere — and that’s not
the point.The point is that, e.g., both Leo XIII and Pius XI
specified paying higher wages to enable workers to save so they could purchase
capital.

Pope Leo XIII

As Leo XIII said
in § 46 of Rerum Novarum:

If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him
comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it
easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by
cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest
source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this
great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that
private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore,
should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible
of the people to become owners.

And as Pius XI
said in § 63 of Quadragesimo Anno:

As We have already indicated, following in
the footsteps of Our Predecessor, it will be impossible to put these principles
into practice unless the non-owning workers through industry and thrift advance
to the state of possessing some little property. But except from pay for work,
from what source can a man who has nothing else but work from which to obtain
food and the necessaries of life set anything aside for himself through
practicing frugality? Let us, therefore, explaining and developing wherever
necessary Leo XIII’s teachings and precepts, take up this question of wages and
salaries which he called one “of very great importance.”

Now — if someone
comes up with a more efficient or less expensive way for workers (or anyone
else) to become owners of capital, does that mean he or she is dissenting from
papal teachings or disobeying the pope?If the new way to attain the goal of worker ownership is consistent with
basic principles of morality as well as human law (that is supposed to be based
on the natural law, i.e., the universal
code of human behavior), is there a problem?

Of course not —
although a number of commentators insist that must be the case . . . except
when it does not suit their purposes to do so.Thus, any means by which workers can become owners without violating
anyone else’s rights or harming the common good is legitimate.Strictly speaking, in regard to the means of
acquiring and possessing capital (the special value of labor as intrinsic to
the human person is a different issue), there is nothing particularly sacred or
even special about wages.

There is, in
fact, an unjust limitation imposed if savings from wages are the sole source of
financing for new capital formation.It
prevents anyone who does not work for wages from becoming an owner.Thus, better than wages would be some means
by which not only workers, but every child, woman, and man can become owners
without depriving anyone of their wealth or violating their rights.

One proposal that
might be adequate is Capital Homesteading — which we’ll cover in the next
posting on this subject, in which we will discuss a possible alternative to a two-state solution that might be just for everyone.